Ya Ali Madad
I just want to understand that why Allah has created this universe?
WHY ALLAH CREATED THE UNIVERSE?
For my prospective, Whatever you see, Everything and Every One is a Teacher.
Here are some Quranic Ayat. the Purpose, Why Allah created the universe.
[Quran 10:5] He is the One who rendered the sun radiant, and the moon a light, and He designed its phases that you may learn to count the years and to calculate. GOD did not create all this, except for a specific purpose. He explains the revelations for people who know.
[Quran 16:3] He created the heavens and the earth for a specific purpose. He is much too High, far above any idols they set up.
[Quran 21:16] We did not create the heavens and the earth, and everything between them just for amusement.
[Quran 23:115] "Did you think that we created you in vain; that you were not to be returned to us?"
[Quran 46:3] We did not create the heavens and the earth, and everything between them except for a specific purpose, and for a finite interim. Those who disbelieve are totally oblivious to the warnings given to them.
[Quran 64:3] He created the heavens and the earth for a specific purpose, designed you and perfected your design, then to Him is the final destiny.
[Quran 76:2] We created the human from a liquid mixture, from two parents, in order to test him. Thus, we made him a hearer and a seer.
[Quran 8:28] You should know that your money and your children are a test, and that GOD possesses a great recompense.
[Quran 2:155] We will surely test you through some fear, hunger, and loss of money, lives, and crops. Give good news to the steadfast.
[Quran 2:214] Do you expect to enter Paradise without being tested like those before you? They were tested with hardship and adversity, and were shaken up, until the messenger and those who believed with him said, "Where is GOD's victory?" GOD's victory is near.
[Quran 3:186] You will certainly be tested, through your money and your lives, and you will hear from those who received the scripture, and from the idol worshipers, a lot of insult. If you steadfastly persevere and lead a righteous life, this will prove the strength of your faith.
Here are some Quranic Ayat. the Purpose, Why Allah created the universe.
[Quran 10:5] He is the One who rendered the sun radiant, and the moon a light, and He designed its phases that you may learn to count the years and to calculate. GOD did not create all this, except for a specific purpose. He explains the revelations for people who know.
[Quran 16:3] He created the heavens and the earth for a specific purpose. He is much too High, far above any idols they set up.
[Quran 21:16] We did not create the heavens and the earth, and everything between them just for amusement.
[Quran 23:115] "Did you think that we created you in vain; that you were not to be returned to us?"
[Quran 46:3] We did not create the heavens and the earth, and everything between them except for a specific purpose, and for a finite interim. Those who disbelieve are totally oblivious to the warnings given to them.
[Quran 64:3] He created the heavens and the earth for a specific purpose, designed you and perfected your design, then to Him is the final destiny.
[Quran 76:2] We created the human from a liquid mixture, from two parents, in order to test him. Thus, we made him a hearer and a seer.
[Quran 8:28] You should know that your money and your children are a test, and that GOD possesses a great recompense.
[Quran 2:155] We will surely test you through some fear, hunger, and loss of money, lives, and crops. Give good news to the steadfast.
[Quran 2:214] Do you expect to enter Paradise without being tested like those before you? They were tested with hardship and adversity, and were shaken up, until the messenger and those who believed with him said, "Where is GOD's victory?" GOD's victory is near.
[Quran 3:186] You will certainly be tested, through your money and your lives, and you will hear from those who received the scripture, and from the idol worshipers, a lot of insult. If you steadfastly persevere and lead a righteous life, this will prove the strength of your faith.
The following are verses of the Ginans which directly answer the question.
ejee ba(n)dagee kaaranne sarjeeyo sa(n)saar
muneevar samajo te geenaan veechaar.........................12
For the sake of worship (or servanthood of the Lord), (the Lord) has
created the world. O believers understand the thoughts of the 'geenaan'
(Divine knowledge and wisdom).
ejee duneeyaa seerjeene shaahaa more an-na upaayaajee
pavan paannee paydaa keedhaajee..............................1
My Lord created this world and then produced food(sustenance). He also created air and water.
ejee kahore jeev tame kees kaarann aayaajee
na keedhee saahebjeenee srevaajee............................2
Ask your own selves(souls) for what purpose have we come in this world if you have not worshipped(served) the Lord(Haazar Imaam).
This subject has also been discussed in this forum under:
Doctrines --> Self Manifestation
Doctrines --> the seven heavens?
Doctrines --> Chauda Bhavan
You may want to go there as well.
ejee ba(n)dagee kaaranne sarjeeyo sa(n)saar
muneevar samajo te geenaan veechaar.........................12
For the sake of worship (or servanthood of the Lord), (the Lord) has
created the world. O believers understand the thoughts of the 'geenaan'
(Divine knowledge and wisdom).
ejee duneeyaa seerjeene shaahaa more an-na upaayaajee
pavan paannee paydaa keedhaajee..............................1
My Lord created this world and then produced food(sustenance). He also created air and water.
ejee kahore jeev tame kees kaarann aayaajee
na keedhee saahebjeenee srevaajee............................2
Ask your own selves(souls) for what purpose have we come in this world if you have not worshipped(served) the Lord(Haazar Imaam).
This subject has also been discussed in this forum under:
Doctrines --> Self Manifestation
Doctrines --> the seven heavens?
Doctrines --> Chauda Bhavan
You may want to go there as well.
There is a nice article which deals with the subject below.
Parabola Volume: 20.1
Earth, Air, Fire, Water
TRAVELS OF THE SOUL
Sheikh Tosun Bayrak aljerrahi
What is the origin of the human being? Most of us attribute our existence to the biological formation of the two cells in the mother's womb and the chromosomes in them. We explain the events of our life in terms of luck or, worse still, we attribute them to our own doing. Yet deep inside we know this is not the meaning of life. We are dissatisfied.
In order to be created, it is first necessary to have the One who creates, and that is the Essence of God. Each human being is a manifestation of the Essence of God. Secondly, the One who creates us must have the will to create us. Thirdly, He has to have the power to create. The three divine elements of creation correspond to the three divine elements in the
oneness of God that are responsible for the act of creation. The first is that the existence of a thing prior to its creation depends on an original existence, an existence within which are contained its shape, its character, its actions, its birth and death, and its destiny. That creative existence is God's Essence, the Causal Mind. The thing to be created must have the potential to receive all of this, and the acknowledgment of this is Divine Wisdom. The second is the acceptance of the created to be created, which is faith. The third is the ability of the created to be
receptive to the will of God, which is submission. Thus the trinity in created things is linked with the trinity within the Unity of God, like the relationship between a mirror and the one who is reflected in the mirror.
God said in a divine tradition: "I was a hidden treasure, I loved to be known, so I created the creation." When He was a hidden treasure, He was in a state of Pure Essence which cannot be described, because this state has no words, names, attributes, or likenesses. Before creation, all was a total void, a limitless ocean of darkness which moved when God said: "I loved to be known."When the ocean of Essence moved, from its waves arose the first creation, the first manifestation of God, the light of the Causal Mind, the realm of the word, Pure Essence manifested in its divine attributes. .. .This realm contained the Total Soul, the soul of all the
creation yet to come.
Then the ocean of the attributes of God containing all the souls yet to be created moved, by the power of the Pen and the Word, and from its waves were created the realm of spiritual beings, paradise, hell, death, angels, and the rewards and punishments of God. With the wind of God's wish to see Himself, the ocean of the spirits moved and the world of matter was created—the world of suns and stars, minerals and vegetables, animals and human beings. God, in His love, dressed the souls of His creation in the most beautiful shape and form, made out of fire, water, earth, and air.
The four stages of creation were not separate from each other, nor were they created at different times. They were created all at once. When God said "Be," they all became. Neither were they created from nothing, as nothing can be created from nothing, nor can a thing which exists become nothing. All existences, all incidences, come from God and return to God.
God created the human being last as His most perfect creation, in His own image. The perfect human contains all these realms. He is the microcosm, a jewel, pressed from the essence of the eighteen thousand universes. But the human being was created in two parts. God created the human soul from the light of His own Essence, and He created his body from the coarse matter of fire, water, earth, and air, and He blew his soul into him. The soul was meant to be the master, to ride the body, which was
meant to serve as an animal of burden. The body yearns for the world because it is made of the same material and eventually will return to it. The soul yearns for God and will return to Him.
The soul traveled through the realm of the Causal Mind and through the realm of spirits and angels and the seven heavens down to the material realm, where it passed through the element of fire, bursting into fire, then passed through the realm of water, which put out the fire, then through earth, turning into mud, and finally exposed to air, turning into dried clay. Then, it grew into a vegetable, then it became an animal, and then it turned into the form and shape of a human being. The jewel ot the soul was darkened when burnt by fire, it gathered rust when it hit the water, it was covered with mud passing through earth, and it became heavy and coarse when it came into contact with air. This is the descent, the fall of the human being; when the body dominates the soul, the horse rides the master.
Ascension is possible only when we can reach the soul imprisoned in the body of coarse matter. It cannot be seen with worldly eyes. Truth can be seen only by true eyes, perfection can be recognized only by the perfect. We must shed the weight of the flesh and its desires, attached as it is to this world which pulls us down. Our mind and senses cannot be relied on; with their associations and their imagination, they alter and hide the Truth.
That is why we have different opinions, likes and dislikes. We discuss, we get angry with the ones who do not agree with us. We fight, wage wars, condemn, kill ... sometimes even in the name of truth.
There is but one Truth, one God, one soul. The character of the soul is to love its origin, whom it yearns to meet. The eye of the heart, which can see the soul, may only be opened by love. The eye of the head sees the beautiful and the ugly; the eye of the heart sees only the beautiful. It sees the Truth. If we knew this, everybody else who opposes the Truth, who curses it, who fights against it, would be a part of the Truth. Then we would embrace those people and not condemn them. Love is the only
force which can rid us of the crust hiding the jewel and weighing us down. Only it can permit our essence to rise to our original state as the best of creation, as the deputy of God, whom He created in the image of His own attributes, to whom He taught all His divine names, whom He addresses by saying: "I have created all and everything for you and you for Myself."
Parabola Volume: 20.1
Earth, Air, Fire, Water
TRAVELS OF THE SOUL
Sheikh Tosun Bayrak aljerrahi
What is the origin of the human being? Most of us attribute our existence to the biological formation of the two cells in the mother's womb and the chromosomes in them. We explain the events of our life in terms of luck or, worse still, we attribute them to our own doing. Yet deep inside we know this is not the meaning of life. We are dissatisfied.
In order to be created, it is first necessary to have the One who creates, and that is the Essence of God. Each human being is a manifestation of the Essence of God. Secondly, the One who creates us must have the will to create us. Thirdly, He has to have the power to create. The three divine elements of creation correspond to the three divine elements in the
oneness of God that are responsible for the act of creation. The first is that the existence of a thing prior to its creation depends on an original existence, an existence within which are contained its shape, its character, its actions, its birth and death, and its destiny. That creative existence is God's Essence, the Causal Mind. The thing to be created must have the potential to receive all of this, and the acknowledgment of this is Divine Wisdom. The second is the acceptance of the created to be created, which is faith. The third is the ability of the created to be
receptive to the will of God, which is submission. Thus the trinity in created things is linked with the trinity within the Unity of God, like the relationship between a mirror and the one who is reflected in the mirror.
God said in a divine tradition: "I was a hidden treasure, I loved to be known, so I created the creation." When He was a hidden treasure, He was in a state of Pure Essence which cannot be described, because this state has no words, names, attributes, or likenesses. Before creation, all was a total void, a limitless ocean of darkness which moved when God said: "I loved to be known."When the ocean of Essence moved, from its waves arose the first creation, the first manifestation of God, the light of the Causal Mind, the realm of the word, Pure Essence manifested in its divine attributes. .. .This realm contained the Total Soul, the soul of all the
creation yet to come.
Then the ocean of the attributes of God containing all the souls yet to be created moved, by the power of the Pen and the Word, and from its waves were created the realm of spiritual beings, paradise, hell, death, angels, and the rewards and punishments of God. With the wind of God's wish to see Himself, the ocean of the spirits moved and the world of matter was created—the world of suns and stars, minerals and vegetables, animals and human beings. God, in His love, dressed the souls of His creation in the most beautiful shape and form, made out of fire, water, earth, and air.
The four stages of creation were not separate from each other, nor were they created at different times. They were created all at once. When God said "Be," they all became. Neither were they created from nothing, as nothing can be created from nothing, nor can a thing which exists become nothing. All existences, all incidences, come from God and return to God.
God created the human being last as His most perfect creation, in His own image. The perfect human contains all these realms. He is the microcosm, a jewel, pressed from the essence of the eighteen thousand universes. But the human being was created in two parts. God created the human soul from the light of His own Essence, and He created his body from the coarse matter of fire, water, earth, and air, and He blew his soul into him. The soul was meant to be the master, to ride the body, which was
meant to serve as an animal of burden. The body yearns for the world because it is made of the same material and eventually will return to it. The soul yearns for God and will return to Him.
The soul traveled through the realm of the Causal Mind and through the realm of spirits and angels and the seven heavens down to the material realm, where it passed through the element of fire, bursting into fire, then passed through the realm of water, which put out the fire, then through earth, turning into mud, and finally exposed to air, turning into dried clay. Then, it grew into a vegetable, then it became an animal, and then it turned into the form and shape of a human being. The jewel ot the soul was darkened when burnt by fire, it gathered rust when it hit the water, it was covered with mud passing through earth, and it became heavy and coarse when it came into contact with air. This is the descent, the fall of the human being; when the body dominates the soul, the horse rides the master.
Ascension is possible only when we can reach the soul imprisoned in the body of coarse matter. It cannot be seen with worldly eyes. Truth can be seen only by true eyes, perfection can be recognized only by the perfect. We must shed the weight of the flesh and its desires, attached as it is to this world which pulls us down. Our mind and senses cannot be relied on; with their associations and their imagination, they alter and hide the Truth.
That is why we have different opinions, likes and dislikes. We discuss, we get angry with the ones who do not agree with us. We fight, wage wars, condemn, kill ... sometimes even in the name of truth.
There is but one Truth, one God, one soul. The character of the soul is to love its origin, whom it yearns to meet. The eye of the heart, which can see the soul, may only be opened by love. The eye of the head sees the beautiful and the ugly; the eye of the heart sees only the beautiful. It sees the Truth. If we knew this, everybody else who opposes the Truth, who curses it, who fights against it, would be a part of the Truth. Then we would embrace those people and not condemn them. Love is the only
force which can rid us of the crust hiding the jewel and weighing us down. Only it can permit our essence to rise to our original state as the best of creation, as the deputy of God, whom He created in the image of His own attributes, to whom He taught all His divine names, whom He addresses by saying: "I have created all and everything for you and you for Myself."
razinizar wrote:For my prospective, Whatever you see, Everything and Every One is a Teacher.
Here are some Quranic Ayat. the Purpose, Why Allah created the universe.
[Quran 10:5] He is the One who rendered the sun radiant, and the moon a light, and He designed its phases that you may learn to count the years and to calculate. GOD did not create all this, except for a specific purpose. He explains the revelations for people who know.
[Quran 16:3] He created the heavens and the earth for a specific purpose. He is much too High, far above any idols they set up.
[Quran 21:16] We did not create the heavens and the earth, and everything between them just for amusement.
[Quran 23:115] "Did you think that we created you in vain; that you were not to be returned to us?"
[Quran 46:3] We did not create the heavens and the earth, and everything between them except for a specific purpose, and for a finite interim. Those who disbelieve are totally oblivious to the warnings given to them.
[Quran 64:3] He created the heavens and the earth for a specific purpose, designed you and perfected your design, then to Him is the final destiny.
[Quran 76:2] We created the human from a liquid mixture, from two parents, in order to test him. Thus, we made him a hearer and a seer.
[Quran 8:28] You should know that your money and your children are a test, and that GOD possesses a great recompense.
[Quran 2:155] We will surely test you through some fear, hunger, and loss of money, lives, and crops. Give good news to the steadfast.
[Quran 2:214] Do you expect to enter Paradise without being tested like those before you? They were tested with hardship and adversity, and were shaken up, until the messenger and those who believed with him said, "Where is GOD's victory?" GOD's victory is near.
[Quran 3:186] You will certainly be tested, through your money and your lives, and you will hear from those who received the scripture, and from the idol worshipers, a lot of insult. If you steadfastly persevere and lead a righteous life, this will prove the strength of your faith.
Razinizar, you have quoted many Quranic Verses and these are beautiful.
As you see God himself says that he has created this world for "specific purpose".
I just want to know that purpose.
kmaherali wrote:There is a nice article which deals with the subject below.
Parabola Volume: 20.1
Earth, Air, Fire, Water
TRAVELS OF THE SOUL
Sheikh Tosun Bayrak aljerrahi
What is the origin of the human being? Most of us attribute our existence to the biological formation of the two cells in the mother's womb and the chromosomes in them. We explain the events of our life in terms of luck or, worse still, we attribute them to our own doing. Yet deep inside we know this is not the meaning of life. We are dissatisfied.
In order to be created, it is first necessary to have the One who creates, and that is the Essence of God. Each human being is a manifestation of the Essence of God. Secondly, the One who creates us must have the will to create us. Thirdly, He has to have the power to create. The three divine elements of creation correspond to the three divine elements in the
oneness of God that are responsible for the act of creation. The first is that the existence of a thing prior to its creation depends on an original existence, an existence within which are contained its shape, its character, its actions, its birth and death, and its destiny. That creative existence is God's Essence, the Causal Mind. The thing to be created must have the potential to receive all of this, and the acknowledgment of this is Divine Wisdom. The second is the acceptance of the created to be created, which is faith. The third is the ability of the created to be
receptive to the will of God, which is submission. Thus the trinity in created things is linked with the trinity within the Unity of God, like the relationship between a mirror and the one who is reflected in the mirror.
God said in a divine tradition: "I was a hidden treasure, I loved to be known, so I created the creation." When He was a hidden treasure, He was in a state of Pure Essence which cannot be described, because this state has no words, names, attributes, or likenesses. Before creation, all was a total void, a limitless ocean of darkness which moved when God said: "I loved to be known."When the ocean of Essence moved, from its waves arose the first creation, the first manifestation of God, the light of the Causal Mind, the realm of the word, Pure Essence manifested in its divine attributes. .. .This realm contained the Total Soul, the soul of all the
creation yet to come.
Then the ocean of the attributes of God containing all the souls yet to be created moved, by the power of the Pen and the Word, and from its waves were created the realm of spiritual beings, paradise, hell, death, angels, and the rewards and punishments of God. With the wind of God's wish to see Himself, the ocean of the spirits moved and the world of matter was created—the world of suns and stars, minerals and vegetables, animals and human beings. God, in His love, dressed the souls of His creation in the most beautiful shape and form, made out of fire, water, earth, and air.
The four stages of creation were not separate from each other, nor were they created at different times. They were created all at once. When God said "Be," they all became. Neither were they created from nothing, as nothing can be created from nothing, nor can a thing which exists become nothing. All existences, all incidences, come from God and return to God.
God created the human being last as His most perfect creation, in His own image. The perfect human contains all these realms. He is the microcosm, a jewel, pressed from the essence of the eighteen thousand universes. But the human being was created in two parts. God created the human soul from the light of His own Essence, and He created his body from the coarse matter of fire, water, earth, and air, and He blew his soul into him. The soul was meant to be the master, to ride the body, which was
meant to serve as an animal of burden. The body yearns for the world because it is made of the same material and eventually will return to it. The soul yearns for God and will return to Him.
The soul traveled through the realm of the Causal Mind and through the realm of spirits and angels and the seven heavens down to the material realm, where it passed through the element of fire, bursting into fire, then passed through the realm of water, which put out the fire, then through earth, turning into mud, and finally exposed to air, turning into dried clay. Then, it grew into a vegetable, then it became an animal, and then it turned into the form and shape of a human being. The jewel ot the soul was darkened when burnt by fire, it gathered rust when it hit the water, it was covered with mud passing through earth, and it became heavy and coarse when it came into contact with air. This is the descent, the fall of the human being; when the body dominates the soul, the horse rides the master.
Ascension is possible only when we can reach the soul imprisoned in the body of coarse matter. It cannot be seen with worldly eyes. Truth can be seen only by true eyes, perfection can be recognized only by the perfect. We must shed the weight of the flesh and its desires, attached as it is to this world which pulls us down. Our mind and senses cannot be relied on; with their associations and their imagination, they alter and hide the Truth.
That is why we have different opinions, likes and dislikes. We discuss, we get angry with the ones who do not agree with us. We fight, wage wars, condemn, kill ... sometimes even in the name of truth.
There is but one Truth, one God, one soul. The character of the soul is to love its origin, whom it yearns to meet. The eye of the heart, which can see the soul, may only be opened by love. The eye of the head sees the beautiful and the ugly; the eye of the heart sees only the beautiful. It sees the Truth. If we knew this, everybody else who opposes the Truth, who curses it, who fights against it, would be a part of the Truth. Then we would embrace those people and not condemn them. Love is the only
force which can rid us of the crust hiding the jewel and weighing us down. Only it can permit our essence to rise to our original state as the best of creation, as the deputy of God, whom He created in the image of His own attributes, to whom He taught all His divine names, whom He addresses by saying: "I have created all and everything for you and you for Myself."
Dear KMaherali,
The article and the references of ginan were good, but I did not fine my answer there.
See in the article which you have posted, as it is written that "I was a hidden treasure, I loved to be known, so I created the creation."
Now dont you think it does not make any sense?
Allah loved to be known from the thing which itself is unknown?
As we all believe that this world is mortal then we it has be created?
A day will come when there would be anything, then would there be anyone knowing God?
My question is still there what is the reason for creating this Universe?
These are not my words or the author's. These are the words of God related to the Prophet and they are well known across all esoteric traditions of Islam.adeel_aly wrote: See in the article which you have posted, as it is written that "I was a hidden treasure, I loved to be known, so I created the creation."
Now dont you think it does not make any sense?
As I mentioned before that you cannot determine through ordinary language matters that transcend it. These are mysteries that one needs resolve through Ibadat. The words referring to the 'hidden treasure' is the best expression one can come up in human language and they are symbollic pointing to something beyond language and hence the apparent ambiguity or non-sense. You should not consider them in a literal sense.
Last edited by kmaherali on Mon Nov 10, 2008 1:20 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Absolutely and there is no other way. MHI has told us that through the Noor of Hazarat Ali you will come closer to the understanding of "He who is above all else'.adeel_aly wrote:@ KMaherali
So Dear you mean to say I have to do ibadat to get my answer?
I just need a little clarification as this question is disturbing since i was of 7 years
Mowlana Rumi says:
"Everyone sees the unseen in proportion to the clarity of his heart, and that depends upon how much he has polished it. Whoever has polished it more sees more -- more unseen forms become manifest to him."
The article below reflects the Prophetic hadith and Mowlana Rumi's quote above on the reason for creation and the method of knowing the Hidden.
Merry Christmas!
THE INDWELLING SPIRIT
Sri Aurobindo
Published in the Parabola magazine Fall 2008 issue
THE INVOLUTION OF A SUPERCONSCIENT SPIRIT in inconscient Matter is the secret cause of this visible and apparent world. The keyword of the earth's riddle is the gradual evolution of a hidden illimitable consciousness and power out of the seemingly inert yet furiously driven force of insensible Nature. Earth-life is one self-chosen habitation of a great Divinity and his aeonic will is to change it from a blind prison into his splendid mansion and high heaven-reaching temple.
The nature of the Divinity in the world is an enigma to the mind, but to our enlarging consciousness it will appear as a presence simple and inevitable. Freed we shall enter into the immutable stability of an eternal existence that puts on this revealing multitude of significant mutable forms. Illumined we shall become aware of the indivisible light of an infinite consciousness that breaks out here into multiform grouping and detail of knowledge. Sublimated in might, we shall share the illimitable movement of an omnipotent force that works out its marvels in self-imposed limits. Fixed in griefless bliss we shall possess the calm and ecstasy of an immeasurable Delight that creates forever the multitudinous waves and rhythms and the ever increasing outward-going and inward-drawing intensities of its own creative and communicative world-possessing and self-possessing bliss. This, since we are inwardly souls of that Spirit, will be the nature of our fourfold experience when the evolving Godhead will work here in its own unveiled movement.
If that full manifestation had been from the beginning, there would be no terrestrial problem, no anguish of growth, no baffled seeking out of mind and will and life and body towards knowledge and force and joy and an immortal persistence.
But this Godhead, whether within us or outside in things and forces and creatures, started from an involution in inconscience of Nature and began by the manifestation of its apparent opposites. Out of a vast cosmic inconscience and inertia and insensibility, an initial disguise that is almost non-existence, the Spirit in Matter has chosen to evolve and slowly shape, as if in a grudging and gradually yielding material, its might and light and infinity and beatitude.
The significance of the terrestrial evolution lies in this slow and progressive liberation of some latent indwelling Spirit. The heart of its mystery is the difficult appearance, the tardy becoming of a divine Something or Someone already involved in physical Nature. The Spirit is there with all its potential forces in a first formal basis of its own supporting, yet resistant substance. Its greater subsequent and deliberately emerging movements, life and mind and intuition and soul and supermind and the light of the Godhead are already there, locked up and obscurely compressed into the initial power and first expressive values of Matter.
Before there could be any evolution, there must needs be this involution of the Divine All that is to emerge. Otherwise there would have been not an ordered and significant evolution, but a successive creation of things unforeseeable, not contained in their antecedents, not their inevitable consequences or right followers in sequence. This world is not an apparent order fortuitously managed by
PENCIL DRAWING OF SRI AUROBINDO BY THE MOTHER, !935(PHOTOGRAPH)
an inexplicable Chance. Neither is it a marvelous mechanism miraculously contrived by a stumblingly fortunate unconscious Force or mechanical Necessity. It is not even a structure built according to his fancy or will by an external and therefore necessarily a limited Creator. Mentally conceivable, each of these solutions can explain one side or appearance of things; but it is a greater truth that can alone successfully join all the aspects and illumine all the facts of the enigma. Chance, there would be no necessity of a new advance; nothing beyond mind need appear in the material world - as indeed there was then no necessity for even mind to arise at all out of the meaningless blind material whirl. Consciousness itself would be only a fortuitous apparition, a strange hallucinating reflection or ghost of Matter.
Or if all were the work of a mechanical Force, then too mind need not have appeared at all as part of the huge grinding engine; there was no indispensable call for this subtler and yet less competent groping mechanic contrivance. No frail thinking brain should have been there to labor over the quite sufficient cogs and springs and pistons of the first unerring machine. A supermind added on this brilliant and painful complication would be still more a superfluity and a luminous insolence; it could be nothing more than a false pretension of transitory consciousness to govern and possess the greater inconscient Force that is its creator. Or if an experimenting, external and therefore limited Creator were the inventor of the animal's suffering life and man's fumbling mind and this huge mainly unused and useless universe, there was no reason why he should not have stopped short with the construction of a mental intelligence in his creatures, content with the difficult ingenuity of his labor. Even if he were all-powerful and all-wise, he might well pause there—for if he went farther, the creature would be in danger of rising too near to the level of his Maker. But if this is the truth of things that an infinite Spirit, an eternal Divine Presence and Consciousness and Force and Bliss is involved and hidden here and slowly emerges, then is it inevitable that its powers or the ascending degrees of its one power should emerge too one after the other till the whole glory is manifested, a mighty divine Fact embodied and dynamic and visible. All mental ideas of the nature of things, are inconclusive considerations of our insufficient logical reason when it attempts in its limited light and ignorant self-sufficiency to weigh the logical probabilities of a universal order which after all its speculation and discovery must remain obscure to it still and an enigma. The true witness and discoverer is our growing consciousness; for that consciousness is itself the sign and power of the evolving Divine, and its growth out of the apparent inconscience of the material universe is the fundamental, the one abiding, progressive index event of the long earth-story. Only when this evolving consciousness can grow into its own full divine power will we directly know ourselves and the world instead of catching at tags and tail ends of an insufficient figure of
knowledge. This full power of the consciousness is super-mind or gnosis—supermind because to reach it we have to pass beyond and turn upon mind as the mind itself has passed and turned upon life and inconscient matter and gnosis because it is eternally self-possessed of Truth and in its very stuff and nature it is dynamic substance of knowledge.
The true knowledge of things is denied to our reason, because that is not our spirit's greatest essential power but only an expedient, a transitional instrument meant to deal with the appearance of things and their phenomenal process. True knowledge commences only when our consciousness can pass beyond its present normal limit in man: for then it becomes directly aware of its self and of the Power in the world and begins to have at least an initial knowledge by identity which is the sole true knowledge. Henceforward it knows and sees, no longer by the reason groping among
LAKSHMl, THE HINDU GODDESS OF WEALTH AND HAPPINESS, 1865
THE 600DESS SITS IN A LOTUS PLANT HOLDING AN ELEPHANT (PHOTOGRAPH)
external data, but by an ever increasing and always more luminous self-illumining and all illuminating experience. In the end it will become a conscious part of the Divine revealing itself in the world; its life will be a power for the conscious evolution of that which is still unmanifested in the material universe.
From Sri Aurobindo, Volume: 12 [CWSA] (Essays Divine and Human), pages 161-164.
Reprinted by permission.
*****
Prayer of Francis of Assisi
Most high,
glorious God,
let your light fill the shadows of my heart
and grant me, Lord,
true faith,
certain hope,
perfect love,
awareness and knowing,
that I may fulfill Your holy will.
Merry Christmas!
THE INDWELLING SPIRIT
Sri Aurobindo
Published in the Parabola magazine Fall 2008 issue
THE INVOLUTION OF A SUPERCONSCIENT SPIRIT in inconscient Matter is the secret cause of this visible and apparent world. The keyword of the earth's riddle is the gradual evolution of a hidden illimitable consciousness and power out of the seemingly inert yet furiously driven force of insensible Nature. Earth-life is one self-chosen habitation of a great Divinity and his aeonic will is to change it from a blind prison into his splendid mansion and high heaven-reaching temple.
The nature of the Divinity in the world is an enigma to the mind, but to our enlarging consciousness it will appear as a presence simple and inevitable. Freed we shall enter into the immutable stability of an eternal existence that puts on this revealing multitude of significant mutable forms. Illumined we shall become aware of the indivisible light of an infinite consciousness that breaks out here into multiform grouping and detail of knowledge. Sublimated in might, we shall share the illimitable movement of an omnipotent force that works out its marvels in self-imposed limits. Fixed in griefless bliss we shall possess the calm and ecstasy of an immeasurable Delight that creates forever the multitudinous waves and rhythms and the ever increasing outward-going and inward-drawing intensities of its own creative and communicative world-possessing and self-possessing bliss. This, since we are inwardly souls of that Spirit, will be the nature of our fourfold experience when the evolving Godhead will work here in its own unveiled movement.
If that full manifestation had been from the beginning, there would be no terrestrial problem, no anguish of growth, no baffled seeking out of mind and will and life and body towards knowledge and force and joy and an immortal persistence.
But this Godhead, whether within us or outside in things and forces and creatures, started from an involution in inconscience of Nature and began by the manifestation of its apparent opposites. Out of a vast cosmic inconscience and inertia and insensibility, an initial disguise that is almost non-existence, the Spirit in Matter has chosen to evolve and slowly shape, as if in a grudging and gradually yielding material, its might and light and infinity and beatitude.
The significance of the terrestrial evolution lies in this slow and progressive liberation of some latent indwelling Spirit. The heart of its mystery is the difficult appearance, the tardy becoming of a divine Something or Someone already involved in physical Nature. The Spirit is there with all its potential forces in a first formal basis of its own supporting, yet resistant substance. Its greater subsequent and deliberately emerging movements, life and mind and intuition and soul and supermind and the light of the Godhead are already there, locked up and obscurely compressed into the initial power and first expressive values of Matter.
Before there could be any evolution, there must needs be this involution of the Divine All that is to emerge. Otherwise there would have been not an ordered and significant evolution, but a successive creation of things unforeseeable, not contained in their antecedents, not their inevitable consequences or right followers in sequence. This world is not an apparent order fortuitously managed by
PENCIL DRAWING OF SRI AUROBINDO BY THE MOTHER, !935(PHOTOGRAPH)
an inexplicable Chance. Neither is it a marvelous mechanism miraculously contrived by a stumblingly fortunate unconscious Force or mechanical Necessity. It is not even a structure built according to his fancy or will by an external and therefore necessarily a limited Creator. Mentally conceivable, each of these solutions can explain one side or appearance of things; but it is a greater truth that can alone successfully join all the aspects and illumine all the facts of the enigma. Chance, there would be no necessity of a new advance; nothing beyond mind need appear in the material world - as indeed there was then no necessity for even mind to arise at all out of the meaningless blind material whirl. Consciousness itself would be only a fortuitous apparition, a strange hallucinating reflection or ghost of Matter.
Or if all were the work of a mechanical Force, then too mind need not have appeared at all as part of the huge grinding engine; there was no indispensable call for this subtler and yet less competent groping mechanic contrivance. No frail thinking brain should have been there to labor over the quite sufficient cogs and springs and pistons of the first unerring machine. A supermind added on this brilliant and painful complication would be still more a superfluity and a luminous insolence; it could be nothing more than a false pretension of transitory consciousness to govern and possess the greater inconscient Force that is its creator. Or if an experimenting, external and therefore limited Creator were the inventor of the animal's suffering life and man's fumbling mind and this huge mainly unused and useless universe, there was no reason why he should not have stopped short with the construction of a mental intelligence in his creatures, content with the difficult ingenuity of his labor. Even if he were all-powerful and all-wise, he might well pause there—for if he went farther, the creature would be in danger of rising too near to the level of his Maker. But if this is the truth of things that an infinite Spirit, an eternal Divine Presence and Consciousness and Force and Bliss is involved and hidden here and slowly emerges, then is it inevitable that its powers or the ascending degrees of its one power should emerge too one after the other till the whole glory is manifested, a mighty divine Fact embodied and dynamic and visible. All mental ideas of the nature of things, are inconclusive considerations of our insufficient logical reason when it attempts in its limited light and ignorant self-sufficiency to weigh the logical probabilities of a universal order which after all its speculation and discovery must remain obscure to it still and an enigma. The true witness and discoverer is our growing consciousness; for that consciousness is itself the sign and power of the evolving Divine, and its growth out of the apparent inconscience of the material universe is the fundamental, the one abiding, progressive index event of the long earth-story. Only when this evolving consciousness can grow into its own full divine power will we directly know ourselves and the world instead of catching at tags and tail ends of an insufficient figure of
knowledge. This full power of the consciousness is super-mind or gnosis—supermind because to reach it we have to pass beyond and turn upon mind as the mind itself has passed and turned upon life and inconscient matter and gnosis because it is eternally self-possessed of Truth and in its very stuff and nature it is dynamic substance of knowledge.
The true knowledge of things is denied to our reason, because that is not our spirit's greatest essential power but only an expedient, a transitional instrument meant to deal with the appearance of things and their phenomenal process. True knowledge commences only when our consciousness can pass beyond its present normal limit in man: for then it becomes directly aware of its self and of the Power in the world and begins to have at least an initial knowledge by identity which is the sole true knowledge. Henceforward it knows and sees, no longer by the reason groping among
LAKSHMl, THE HINDU GODDESS OF WEALTH AND HAPPINESS, 1865
THE 600DESS SITS IN A LOTUS PLANT HOLDING AN ELEPHANT (PHOTOGRAPH)
external data, but by an ever increasing and always more luminous self-illumining and all illuminating experience. In the end it will become a conscious part of the Divine revealing itself in the world; its life will be a power for the conscious evolution of that which is still unmanifested in the material universe.
From Sri Aurobindo, Volume: 12 [CWSA] (Essays Divine and Human), pages 161-164.
Reprinted by permission.
*****
Prayer of Francis of Assisi
Most high,
glorious God,
let your light fill the shadows of my heart
and grant me, Lord,
true faith,
certain hope,
perfect love,
awareness and knowing,
that I may fulfill Your holy will.
I wouldn't deny that there is a reason for creation as clearly indicated in Quranic verses above,
But my question is does there need to be a reason?
Is God bound to have a reason to do what he wishes?
We humans do everything for a reason, we eat, sit, walk, work, serve others, it is all for a reason. But do we think of God to work the same way?
Isnt He/She above all Human and worldly limitations isnt having a reason to do things a limitations of humans and animals?
So, if he is above all comprehension, and limitations then he does not really need to have a reason to create us.
Simple Fact is God created us because He/she could...
Since we submit to God as Muslims right question is "What is expected of me(Human)?" and "Not Why you created us?"
But my question is does there need to be a reason?
Is God bound to have a reason to do what he wishes?
We humans do everything for a reason, we eat, sit, walk, work, serve others, it is all for a reason. But do we think of God to work the same way?
Isnt He/She above all Human and worldly limitations isnt having a reason to do things a limitations of humans and animals?
So, if he is above all comprehension, and limitations then he does not really need to have a reason to create us.
Simple Fact is God created us because He/she could...
Since we submit to God as Muslims right question is "What is expected of me(Human)?" and "Not Why you created us?"